Let’s Get Our Own Foreign Policy House in Order Before Criticizing Others

On March 31, 2010, the New York Times wrote an editorial that briefly
expressed horror in response to the Moscow subway terror bombings, then warned
that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin might yet again use terrorist attacks to
further consolidate his power, and finally lectured Russia that the only way
to defeat such extremism was to deal with the underlying causes. Such a sermonizing
editorial by any Russian publication after the 9/11 attacks would have engendered
outrage in America. Yet the same conclusions and advice that the Times gave
to Russia in the wake of its tragedy could equally be applied to post-9/11 U.S.
policy.

"We are concerned … that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will use Monday’s
horror as another excuse to further consolidate his authoritarian control of
the country.

"After extremists from Chechnya executed a series of bloody attacks
in 2004, then-President Putin pushed through ‘reforms’ supposedly intended to
improve Russians’ security. Their effect was to hand the Kremlin, Mr. Putin,
and the state security services, from which he came, far too much power to silence
a free press and undercut nearly all political challengers."

Yet similarly, in the aftermath of 9/11, the George W. Bush administration
moved swiftly to expand American executive power past the already potent capabilities
of the imperial presidency into the realm of a "presidency on steroids."
For example, Bush claimed that during wartime, the president could disregard
congressionally passed laws, especially statutes requiring court-approved warrants
for surveillance of Americans. Such rule by executive fiat is usually what petty
dictators do. Bush also unconstitutionally detained terrorism suspects, including
U.S. citizens, indefinitely without trial and then approved torture, which was
prohibited by U.S. and international law, on them. So politicians in the United
States can also use terrorist attacks to grab more power in the name of enhancing
security.

Even more blindly, the Times condescendingly preached to Putin that,

"If Russia is to have any hope of defeating extremism, Mr. Putin is
going to have to focus less on promoting his own power and more on the root
causes of the conflicts in the Caucuses. He can start by heeding his protégé,
Dmitri Medvedev, the current president who has urged that the Kremlin address
the underlying inequities that feed militancy, including poverty, joblessness,
and official corruption. Brute force alone will not work this time either."

And this from the flagship newspaper in a country that for many years has refused
to examine the root causes of the 9/11 attacks and, in fact, has allowed its
politicians to do more of the same. Had the American media and members of Congress
actually examined Osama bin Laden’s writings to attempt to honestly determine
his motives for attacking the United States, the unnecessary long-term occupation
of Afghanistan and the feckless invasion and occupation of Iraq might have been
prevented before they made the problem of blowback anti-U.S. terrorism worse.
Bin Laden has been clear that he attacks the United States because of its intervention
in and military occupation of Islamic lands.

Although it is easy to pick on the Times, the newspaper’s view merely
reflects the lack of introspection by the U.S. political elite and American
society about the ill effects of a U.S. foreign policy of overseas interventionism
and hostile foreign reactions to it. But then the pot should not call the kettle
black, but rather try to clean up its own act first.